James shuddered at the idea, but it felt eerily apt. It did indeed feel like the end.
“What now?” Scorpius said, turning back from the fiery glow beyond the woods. “If the centaurs are being held back somehow, that means we are as well.”
“Ah,” Zane said, brightening. “But the centaurs aren’t gremlins, like us.” He glanced aside at Rose, who nodded fearfully.
“We know all the secret passages in,” she agreed. “The Quidditch shed is probably the closest. Come on!”
Without looking back, she turned and dashed up the beach, skirting the broken hull of the Gertrude, and into the trees.
As he ran to follow, James called, “But I thought the equipment shed passage only worked if that was how you came out of the school to begin with?”
“We fixed that in my third year,” Rose answered back, ducking through bushes and leaping over knotted roots. “Scorpius and I spent a whole Saturday leaving the school through the shed passage about a hundred times in a row, coming back in through the main entrance every time. We built up a cache of returns for whenever we needed them.”
James frowned at this as he ran. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
“You were at Alma Aleron that year,” Zane called from behind.
“Not that we would have invited you anyway,” Scorpius suggested, crashing along in the rear.
Twin spears of light suddenly intersected the students’ path, bobbing wildly and accompanied by a throttling roar. Rose skidded to a halt, braking herself against a tree, just as a large vehicle bounded over the path, its headlamps glaring through the trees. It was some sort of off-road vehicle with huge knobby tyres and gunmetal-grey sides. Voices called from within, and James had a sense of pointing hands and excited direction.
“There, see?” a man’s voice could be heard from an open rear window. “There’s not supposed to be anything here but miles of Forest!
But look yourself! It’s a huge bleedin’ castle! Just like the village that popped up when we was hiking last week!”
The engine whined and strained over the uneven Forest floor.
The vehicle surged forward, crashing over brush, squirreling through the huge, ancient trees.
Two more followed in its wake, moving faster and more confidently. From his place behind a nearby tree, James thought he recognized weapons in the passengers’ hands. Then, with sinking dismay, he recognized the objects they were brandishing. They weren’t weapons, but cameras.
“Not this again,” Zane said, rolling his eyes.
“Come on,” Rose called again, leaping ahead as the vehicles crashed onward through the wood, crawling in the general direction of the castle and the flicker of fire.
As the four neared the castle themselves and began to bypass it, running along the edge of the Forest, they caught glimpses of a huge rabble gathered against the seamless wall of fire. Centaurs moved in galloping groups, orderly and ranked, their weapons raised.
“Merlin’s erected a defence,” James realized aloud. “That’s no normal fire. It’s a fiendfyre boundary!”
“It won’t last,” Scorpius said, and then pointed as he ran. “And what’s that?”
James saw it as well. “That’s no centaur,” he agreed with sinking realization.
Gathered in their own knot, facing the centaurs against the wall of magical flames, was a gaggle of the huge lumbering shapes that James had glimpsed from the ship. They advanced haltingly toward the ranks of centaurs, hunkering their massive shoulders around their tiny heads.
They were giants, dozens of them, in all different monstrous sizes.
“Grawp and Prechka!” Rose cried shrilly. “They came here on their own, even though Hagrid warned them to stay away! And they brought their whole tribe!”
Even in silhouette, James recognized the hulking figure of Prechka. She shied away from the centaurs as they galloped toward her, then around her feet, their weapons raised threateningly. Her potato-like head bobbed and swiveled as she tried to see them all, tried to avoid their stamping, teeming hooves. And then, horribly, she attacked. She was compelled more by terror than anger. James could see it in the clumsy way that she moved, the panicked lurch of her shoulders. She kicked, and one centaur flew through the air, flailing all six of its appendages. Then, spastically, Prechka hunkered, grabbed two more centaurs, one in each hand, and jerked them up to shoulder height.
With a massive lunge, she bashed them together like a pair of meaty cymbals. Even over the roar of the fire and the bellowing voices, James heard the horrible crunch of bones.
“No!” Rose called, stumbling to a halt and raising her hands to her face, unable to tear her eyes away. “No, Prechka!”
“Leave her be!” Scorpius called, his voice suddenly commanding.
“The time for civility is past! It’s her skin or theirs! And soon it might be ours! Keep running!”
“Holy hinkypunks,” Zane breathed in a high, scared voice.
“That was… brutal!”
Lights sprayed over the increasing melee and the vehicle from the Forest burst into view, bouncing over the hillocks. It ground to a halt, its brakes screeching, its body leaning on its springs. The passenger door burst open and a man scrambled out in sudden panic, his eyes bulging up at the giants. He scrambled backwards in terror, tripped and fell at the feet of a stamping centaur. He glanced up at it and screamed, covering his head with his arms.
The other two vehicles bounded forward in pursuit. The middle vehicle crashed into the suddenly halted lead vehicle, nearly running down the panicked passenger. Glass tinkled and voices shouted.
“This is beyond us!” Scorpius called urgently. “Go!”
Distracted and numb with terror, the group ran on again, even as the giants fell fully to battle against the centaurs and the vehicle doors sprang open, disgorging terrified Muggles and their clattering, forgotten cameras.
The fiendfyre raged along the Quidditch pitch, barely missing it but engulfing the Slytherin grandstand, which was already reduced to a mere blackened skeleton, roaring with flame. Running hard beneath the seething light, Rose led the troupe toward the equipment shed, which sizzled and smoked from its own proximity to the fire. Furnace heat swarmed across the pitch, turning the air into writhing shimmers and baking the sweat on James’ brow.
In the near distance, James noticed a flailing, writhing mass, boiling with fiendfyre. His stomach fell as he realized that it was the Whomping Willow. Sparks arose in swirling rafters as it heaved its flaming limbs, its leaves glowing like coals as they burned away, transformed to swarming cinders.
He tore his eyes away, grimly deciding not to point out the terrible sight to the others.
Rose reached for the equipment shed’s door handle, and then jerked her hand back in pain.
“Hot!” she gasped, cradling her burnt fingers.